I was watching TV one day when a commercial for Kay Jewelers got my attention.

I noticed it for two reasons. First, the company was obviously spending a huge amount of money to run it continuously. Second, the company's tagline, "Every kiss begins with Kay", means and says absolutely nothing. While it may be literally true, it says nothing about the company or its products. It adds nothing to the commercial.

Why does this matter?

It matters because too many companies make the same mistake. They assume that a tagline is something that they need to have but that isn't that big of a deal.

I disagree.

I believe that smart companies should pay an inordinate amount of attention to their slogans, tag lines, and positioning statements because of an idea called the "meme".

Let me explain the concept of the meme to those of you who may not have heard the term. The term "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene." Basically, a meme is an idea that moves throughout a population of people, much as a cold moves throughout a population of people (another term for a meme is an idea virus or a virus of the mind). Examples of memes are the ideas that the earth is flat, the theory of evolution, or racist thoughts. The key thing about memes is that they are concepts that are transmitted from person to person, much as a virus is transmitted. Someone becomes infected with the meme and then infects someone else. Memes, like viruses, have a lifespan. They spend an amount of time within a population and then either die or are replaced by another meme.

I like to think of marketing as meme crafting.

This approach to marketing works because ordinary people are the most persuasive salespeople. Evangelism works. I am the most likely to buy a product if someone that I know or respect raves about it to me.

I firmly believe that the primary goal of every company should be to turn their customers into their sales force.

Of course, the process of someone's raving about a product is one of infecting me with a meme. They hold an idea, transmit it to me, and persuade me to hold that idea as well. If they have been successful, then I have been infected with the meme.

Of course, this brings up the issue of transmissibility. Some memes (like some viruses) are more transmissible than others. Some memes act like the common cold and are transmitted easily. Some memes act like Malaria, and rely on some external agent for their transmission.

This is relevant to marketing because marketers have the ability to influence the transmissibility of their memes.

Let's go back to the Kay Jewelers example and look at it from the perspective of meme crafting. Let's assume that Kay has two goals. First, to infect me with the meme that Kay is a good place to shop. Second, to turn me into someone who will infect other people. Near as I can tell, their failure at the first makes the second a moot point.

I haven't been infected with their meme because there is nothing to latch onto. There is no promise. They don't say anything. They just say something irrelevant. I'm unlikely to tell someone "Did you know that every kiss begins with Kay?"

So what does good meme crafting look like?

A great example is the Veggie Tales videos. Those of you who don't live in the States or have small kids have probably missed this. However, some of you American parents may know what I am talking about.

Veggie Tales are children's videos that use cartoon characters to teach biblical lessons and principles. Things like loving your neighbor, not spreading rumors, and that kind of thing. They do it in a fairly subtle way. I love the Veggie Tales videos because they solve a problem for me. They give me an alternative to Pokeman and other videos that are either neutral or actually of concern.

The folks who run Veggie Tales know something about meme crafting. Their meme goes like this...

Veggie Tales. Sunday morning values. Saturday morning fun.

This is brilliant. It gets to both the problem that is solved and the benefit that is delivered. This is also such a simple but powerful idea that it rates very high in terms of transmissibility. That explains the rapid spread of the Veggie Tales meme.

Another example is Armatale. Anyone who has ever entertained knows about the problems with silver. It's beautiful, but very hard to care for. It's a high-maintenance metal. What the folks at Wilton have done is come up with a material that looks great but that stays clean and can be used in both the oven and refrigerator. Armatale is incredibly convenient and versatile and solves so many of the problems of people who entertain.

Their meme goes like this...

Wilton Armetale metal serveware combines the elegance of silver and the warmth of pewter. But, it's so much easier to care for.

Beautiful.

One pattern to note is that many good memes are based on what people already know. They combine two or more familiar concepts. Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun. The elegance of silver and the warmth of pewter in an easy to care for package.

This tactic works for two reasons. First, you don't have to teach anyone anything new. You just have to show them how C combines the best of A and B. Second, by positioning your idea relative to A and B, you make your idea look much more credible since A and B are known successes. This also makes your idea look much less risky.

This "best of both worlds" approach can be used in a wide range of industries. For example, when SalesLogix was first launched, its meme was...

SalesLogix makes the first true sales automation solution that's as easy to use as Act.

The goal was to communicate that SalesLogix combined the best of both worlds. That it offered the power of high-end systems and the usability of contact managers. This worked because most people in the industry were familiar with both the high end and the low end of the market. All they had to do was remember that SalesLogix was a combination of the two. This simple message, combined with Pat Sullivan's credibility as the creator of Act, resulted in SalesLogix's growing from $0 to $100 million in sales in just 5 years.

A similar approach is used widely in Hollywood. Robert Altman's movie The Player made fun of the fact that many Hollywood movies are pitched and summarized as __(Movie A)__ meets __(Movie B)__. Similarly, many TV shows are pitched as __(familiar show)__ in a __(different location)__.

For example, the Wesley Snipes film Passenger 57 could be summarized as "Die Hard on an airplane." The film You've Got Mail could be summarized as "Sleepless in Seattle but with e-mail." Speed 2 could be summed up as "Speed on a boat." George Lucas in Love could be summarized as "Star Wars meets Shakespeare in Love".

While this approach has some problems, especially for totally new work, the advantage of using the _____ meets _____ format is that it makes it easier for people to remember and quickly transmit your meme. People can sum your idea up in 5 seconds. That improves your ideas chances of being remembered and passed on

So what does this mean to you?

I am convinced that the success of Veggie Tales, Armatale, and SalesLogix was due to the crafting of the memes. These memes were well-crafted and easy to transmit. As a result, the size of the sales force increased with each sale of the product. Each customer became a salesperson. The result is that, in the case of Veggie Tales and Heuris, the memes were able to spread with minimal expenditures.

Any company that wants to succeed will learn the lesson of these and other companies and pay much more attention to what they say and how they say it. They will pay much closer attention to how they craft their memes.